


turn your heart into a temple of fire

by zjofierose



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Almost Drowning, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, Alternate Universe - Historical, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Self-Discovery, Teen Romance, Wishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21999115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire. Your essence is gold hidden in dust. To reveal its splendor, you need to burn in the fire of love. ~RumiOne day Yuri Plisetsky pulls a half-djinn from a frozen lake in the middle of Russia. After that, everything changes.
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Comments: 20
Kudos: 94
Collections: Yuri!!! on Ice Secret Skater 2019





	turn your heart into a temple of fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zyr (pxssnelke)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pxssnelke/gifts).



> My Yuri on Ice!! Secret Skater fic for @zhadyra - I hope you like it!!
> 
> This is set in ~waves hands~ something like the 1910's-1950's in rural Russia somewhere. It's after shotguns and metal skates that strap on to your boots, but pre-TV's/consistent electricity/etc. Don't think about it too hard, that's my advice.
> 
> many thanks as always to the wonderful @quazydellasue for giving it a once-over! <3

The woods outside his grandfather’s cabin are huge, stretching for thousands of miles in every direction, an arm of the massive boreal forest which covers every part of the only world Yuri has ever known. In spring, the woods are filled with birdsong and pollen; in summer with whispering green leaves and running deer; in the fall with crisp frost and ermine changing their fur from sandy brown to purest white. 

In the winter, though, the woods are bare and stark, full of ice and snow, and it’s then that Yuri loves them best.

\--

“Be back before dark,” Yuri’s grandfather calls from his chair where he’s whittling a new set of spoons to take to the village market. “You know what’s in those woods at night.”

Yuri rolls his eyes. His grandfather is old, and superstitious. Yuri is far too young and smart to believe in things like  _ rusalky _ and  _ leshiy _ \- the only things in these woods that can hurt him are the bears and wolves, and he knows how to deal with those. 

He sets out in the glittering light of the winter morning, the sky sharply blue overhead and the fields of his grandfather’s small farm covered in a knee-deep layer of shimmering snow. He’s wearing his narrow snowshoes, his lithe frame still light enough to easily dance along the surface of the drifts with the help of the light wood and sinew netting that he ties to his feet. He’s strapped his skates to the pack on his back along with a lunch of bread and dried elk jerky, and he always carries his hunting knife in his belt. 

The path through the woods is unremarkable, likely even unnoticeable if you don’t know it’s there, but Yuri knows every deer track in these woods for miles around, knows them from running the trap lines in winter and foraging in the summer. There are three different ponds on which he likes to skate, and he pauses beneath the first overhang of dark, bare branches, debating his options. The one to the north is shallow and freezes hard, so he can be assured of safe ice, but it’s relatively small. The one to the south is much bigger, but it’s also much deeper, which means a greater potential of weak ice when it’s still early in the season. Yuri trusts himself, knows the ice well, but he’s also no fool, and falling into a frozen lake alone in the middle of winter is a great way to never be seen again. No, he decides, it’s been too warm lately for the south pond. The pond to the east is the happy medium - larger than the first, but safer than the second. He settles himself on the trail facing the sun and sets off cheerfully, whistling through his teeth to the birds as he goes.

He’s not paying attention to where he’s walking; he doesn’t need to, his feet know where to take him, around trees and over fallen logs. He walks and walks, and suddenly the woods are opening up in front of him, sun glinting blindingly off a sheet of ice that’s only lightly dusted with snow. It’s beautiful, the air sparkling above the perfect sphere of the frozen pond, the banks along the shore carefully drifted.

It’s lovely, perfect, and it’s not at all the pond he’s supposed to have found. 

Yuri blinks. The shape of it is wrong, and the trees around the edge seem more dense, and maybe taller as well.  _ Strange _ , he thinks; it didn’t seem like he’d gone astray while he was walking, but he must have. Still, the ice is clear and thick, so he shrugs and dismisses it, setting down his pack and strapping his skates to the bottoms of his boots. 

There’s a figure out on the pond when he looks up, which is surprising - he hadn’t heard them arrive, but maybe they’d been just sitting down when he showed up, much like he is now. The figure is broader than he is, and dark haired, bareheaded even in the freezing cold. Yuri watches with admiration as they skate in tight loops, tracing delicate circuits into the fresh ice. 

It’s unusual enough to meet someone else out here in the middle of the deep woods, but what’s even stranger is that Yuri doesn’t recognize them at all. There aren’t many people who live this far out, and Yuri’s known all of those few since he was born. He frowns, tightening his skate straps, and stands to step onto the ice. Maybe it’s someone’s relation whom he’s never met, or maybe a traveler or trader passing by. He squints, watching as the figure in front of him builds speed, turning to glide backward and spreading its arms as it lifts a leg from the ice and launches itself into the air.

Yuri watches with his mouth open in awe as the figure twists in the air, once, twice, reaching down with one foot to land. 

Yuri sees the figure fall and keep falling well before the reverberations of the crack of the breaking ice reach his ears, sees the dark head disappear into the darker water, sees the reaching hand grasping at the slippery surface of the ice. 

He hears the dreadful gunshot report of the break echo through the clearing and is on his feet, racing across the smooth surface to where he saw the body fall through, skidding to a stop several meters from the jagged edge. He eyes it warily - the hole is sharp, but not spiderwebbed and not slushy, and the sun is still shining brightly down. It must’ve been a fluke, the angle of the skater’s weight coming down at just the wrong spot, but Yuri’s had enough ice safety beat into his head that he lies down anyway, spreading out as wide as he can as he inches toward the edge.

A huge splash and a tremendous gasp for air break the silence as Yuri reaches his hand out over the open water. The dark hair is black with water, the tan face pinched with cold.

“Take my hand,” Yuri shouts, “I’ll pull you to the edge, but then you have to haul yourself up.”

“Okay,” the stranger manages, kicking close enough to grab hold of Yuri’s fingers and hang on as Yuri scoots backward on the ice. Once he’s close enough, the stranger, who Yuri can see now is a boy near his own age, gets his elbows up onto the ice shelf and kicks hard, heaving himself halfway onto the ice. Yuri leans up and grabs the back of the boy’s coat collar and yanks, hauling him all the way out, flopped on his belly and breathing hard. 

“Come on,” Yuri hisses, adrenaline pumping through his veins as he feels the body under his hand begins to shiver hard. “We have to get you off the ice and warm, or you don’t stand a chance.”

“ _ Da _ ,” the stranger grunts, his voice deeper than Yuri expects, and slithers determinedly after Yuri until they’re a notable distance from the hole. 

“Can you stand?” Yuri asks, and the boy nods jerkily, his body shaking with the chill. Yuri scrambles to his feet, holding out a hand again to help him up.

They make their way across the ice to the shore, and Yuri strips off his heavy coat and boots, flinging them at the stranger’s feet. “Strip,” he says sternly, and the other boy pulls a face. “Strip,” Yuri says, “while I build a fire. Otherwise you will freeze to death. What’s your name?”

“You can call me Otabek,” the boy says, obediently pulling off his shirt and coat with numb fingers as Yuri scurries around gathering fallen branches and twigs. He makes a small pile of kindling and lights it, scooping out snow around it for a windbreak. “Hey. I need help with my skates.”

Yuri looks up to see the stranger -  _ Otabek _ , he tells himself - wrapped in Yuri’s coat and shivering, wet trousers caught around his ankles.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Yuri murmurs, eyeing the sodden laces. “Sorry about this,” he says, and whips out his hunting knife to slice through the bindings of each, letting the metal fall away from the wrappings on Otabek’s feet. 

“Thanks,” Otabek mumbles, kicking free of his wet clothing and shoving his feet into Yuri’s  _ valenki _ .

\--

It doesn’t take long for the fire Yuri builds to blaze huge and bright, faster and hotter than he’s ever seen, in fact. He doesn’t question it, just drags over as many branches as he can find until his socks are sopping and he’s worried about frostbite on his own toes. He spreads Otabek’s clothing over a log close to the fire and adds his own socks, stepping carefully across the cold, cleared ground in his bare feet to join Otabek at the edge of the fire. 

He also doesn’t comment on the way the fire leaps toward Otabek, or the answering gleam in Otabek’s eyes. He knows better than to mention the obvious too directly.

“Here,” Yuri says, digging in his pack for the ever-present metal flask and passing it over. “Don’t drink too much of it, but a little will warm you up.”

Otabek eyes it warily, but untwists the cap and takes a long drink, grimacing as the cheap vodka fills his mouth. “Thanks,” he says after he swallows, and coughs, handing it back and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes are still glowing as Yuri takes the flask back and takes his own healthy swig.

“So,” Yuri says without preamble, “you’re not from around here.”

Otabek makes an expression that might nearly be a smile. “I am, actually,” he says quietly, and Yuri stares at him. “You just don’t remember me.”

Yuri frowns. “You don’t  _ look _ like you’re from around here,” he says, and gestures vaguely at his own eyes. Certainly none of the other Russians he’s known have had dancing flames trapped in their gaze.

“Ah,” Otabek ducks his head for a moment, and when he looks up, his eyes are a heavy black, less noticeable, but no more human. “Sorry. No, my father was from a long way to the south.”

“You know me,” Yuri says, and it’s not a question.

Otabek nods. “I was born here; I lived here until I was not too much younger than you are now. We used to play together when we were children.”

“I don’t remember it,” Yuri tells him flatly, and Otabek nods. 

“My mother is a local,” he says, and Yuri thinks the implication is,  _ my mother is a human _ . “But my father’s people… they don’t always want to be remembered.”

“I see,” Yuri says, and he thinks he does. Otabek is forgettable, when he wants to be, because he is magic. Because he is one of those creatures in the woods that Yuri’s grandfather always warned him about; a djinn, in the flesh, and Yuri himself has saved him from certain death. “Will I remember you this time?”

Otabek lifts an eyebrow. “Do you want to?”

“Yes,” Yuri says without thinking, and Otabek smiles for real now, even if it is small. 

“Then you will,” he says simply, then looks at his hands. “Besides, you saved my life. I owe you a debt now.”

“No,” Yuri starts to say, shaking his head as Otabek draws something out of his collar. It’s a pendant on a small leather thong, and he unties it, reaching over Yuri’s protesting hands to drop it around Yuri’s neck. The pendant itself is made of copper, shiny in the sun and warm with Otabek’s body heat, and Yuri can feel it burning into his skin through his thin shirt. “I don’t need it. I did what anyone would have done.”

“Still,” Otabek says, raising Yuri’s hand in a firm grip, and pressing the pendant into it, “you were the one who did it. He’s still holding Yuri’s hand in his own, wrapping Yuri’s fingers around the hot metal, his face deadly earnest. “This will grant you three wishes. Use them wisely. I’ll come to reclaim it when you’ve used the last.”

“I -” Yuri starts, but Otabek shakes his head, and Yuri falls silent. 

“Three wishes,” Otabek tells him, “and not a single wish more. Remember.”

Yuri nods. “Three. I’ll remember.”

\--

Yuri thinks about it as he walks home, the dusk falling and the moon rising sickle-thin and golden over the horizon. The wind is picking up and he hurries, tracing the well-known twists and turns through the woods which raised him. 

It’s not until he comes within sight of his grandfather’s house, the little two-room  _ izba _ with light from its small windows flickering gently in the gathering night, that the idea comes to him: He can see the stream of smoke trailing from the chimney, and the image of his grandfather, bent with age, seated by the stove and whittling spoon after spoon to try and eke out a living good enough to keep them in firewood and food and clothing and school supplies, clutches sharply at Yuri’s heart. 

He stops where he stands, hand coming up to clutch at the small charm Otabek had hung around his neck. 

“I wish,” he breathes, “that my grandfather were rich and comfortable and happy.”

Yuri exhales carefully, eyes closed, and waits. Nothing changes; there’s no tingle of magic, no rushing of wind, no sudden confirmation that his wish has been heard.  _ Useless _ , he thinks, and opens his eyes.

The sound that escapes his mouth at the sight that greets him is too undignified to acknowledge. Gone is his grandfather’s modest dwelling, and in its place is a large wooden house with leaded windows burning cheerfully into the dark, crowned by carefully carved wooden arches and framed with painted shutters. The house is three stories now, and at least four times as big as before; a paved pathway of river stones wends its way to the front porch, where carved wooden railings march neatly around each side of the house, wide enough for chairs to rest and provide space to take in the summer air. 

It’s huge, and remarkable, and more than he can even begin to comprehend.

Yuri runs.

\--

When he flings himself through the massive front door, he finds his grandfather on his knees in front of the icons, prayer beads in hand. 

“Yurochka,” his grandfather cries, leaping to his feet in a way Yuri hasn’t seen him do since he was a toddler, “did you see the miracle?”

There are tears in the old man’s eyes, and Yuri can’t do anything but fling his arms around his grandfather and squeeze him tight. “I saw it,  _ Dedushka _ ,” he mumbles into the old man’s shoulder, “isn’t it amazing?”

“Yes,” his grandfather answers fervently, “I keep thinking it’s a trick, a mirage. It only happened a few moments ago, but I immediately went to go pray, and the angels haven’t taken it away yet!”

“It wasn’t the angels,” Yuri blurts, and his grandfather stills, setting his hands on Yuri’s shoulders and pushing back to hold him at arm’s length while he rakes him with a piercing gaze.

“What do you know of this miracle, Yuri?” his grandfather asks sternly, and Yuri squirms like he’s a child who’s been caught out in something naughty. 

“I wished for it,” Yuri says, trying and failing to keep the petulant tone out of his voice. “It was a gift.”

“You wished for it?” his grandfather asks incredulously, bushy grey eyebrows shooting up in surprise. “What magic is this?”

“Djinn magic,” Yuri says, and refuses to cringe as his grandfather’s face grows wary. “Don’t look like that. Otabek’s only half-djinn, and it was a gift. There are no strings attached.”

“There are always strings, Yurochka,” his grandfather says, but Yuri shakes his head, stamping his foot. 

“Not from Otabek! I saved his life, and he granted me three wishes in return. I trust him.”

“You saved his life, huh.” His grandfather sighs and ruffles Yuri’s hair. “Well, I’m glad to know that you acted righteously. And you think this Otabek is to be trusted?”

Yuri scowls. “I’m sure of it,” he says, not bothering to wonder why he feels so certain. He knows it, down to his bones - Otabek means him no harm, and his gift was given free and clear, out of the earnestness of a grateful heart. 

“Then we’d better thank him,” Yuri’s grandfather says, and wanders off. “I think there’s a pantry around here somewhere; get down those gold plates from that hutch over there. We’ll make him up a nice one.”

\--

In the end, it’s Yuri alone who takes the plate outside while his grandfather stays in by the huge new oven, warming his old bones and luxuriating under the silken blankets that had appeared on his favorite chair. Yuri piles the plate high with tender broiled lamb and fermented yogurt, salted fish and roasted root vegetables. 

The night is dark and full of stars, and he feels a little ridiculous as he sets the large gold plate heaped with food on the new, sturdy porch-rail. 

“Thank you, Otabek,” he says to the empty night, “for your kindness. My grandfather and I are very grateful.” He pauses, considering. “Please come by sometime,” he adds quickly, “it would be good to see you again. If you want.”

He bows at the waist to the darkness, to the spot where the deep black of the trees may be slightly blacker, and goes inside.

In the morning, the plate is empty and clean, shiny as a huge gold coin and just as expensive. Yuri takes it inside, washes it, and puts it with its mates.

\--

It takes a little while to get used to being rich. It takes the neighbors maybe a little longer to come to terms with the new house and decadent contents, but whenever they’re asked, Yuri and his grandfather just shrug and say they’ve been blessed. It’s true enough, in a manner of speaking, and Yuri’s grandfather commissions a fancy new icon for the church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in honor of their good fortune, so none can fault their piety. And if one of the saints seems to somewhat resemble the stranger who comes to dine at the Plisetsky household on a Sunday afternoon, none of the neighbors are rude enough to mention it. 

After all, the great and mysterious good fortune that has befallen the Plisetskys benefits the whole village: old man Plisetsky can suddenly afford workers for his fields; a cook for his house; a cleaner to keep the extra rooms that are now available for far-flung family members to come and stay in. The village school gets new books, and there’s always extra food from the Plisetsky house for any who might be hungry. No one wants to question such a miracle so closely; better not to speak too much about it, in case it should be taken away.

\--

“Do you like it?” Otabek asks, appearing silently at Yuri’s elbow one beautiful afternoon in late summer. “Being rich?”

Yuri scoffs, gesturing to his fine clothes, the beautiful embroidery that lines the collar and sleeves, the newfound roundness of his cheeks. “What’s not to like?” he asks, “don’t you think it suits me?”

Otabek looks at him for a long moment, and Yuri can feel his cheeks flush. It’s because he’s standing in the sun, he decides, and the heat on his red tunic is making his face warm.

“It does,” Otabek says finally, and there’s something deep in his tone that Yuri can’t identify, so he waves his arms and begins walking instead of trying to parse it out. 

They walk in silence for a while, Yuri’s hands shoved in his pockets, Otabek’s hanging evenly at his side. 

“I’m very grateful,” Yuri says after a while of silence, his voice quiet. “I never knew what it was like to see my grandfather not be worried.”

“I am very grateful, too,” Otabek says easily. “I never knew what it was like not to drown.”

Yuri snorts, glancing over in time to see Otabek’s small smile. 

“You still have two more wishes,” Otabek observes after a while, and Yuri hums noncommittally in response. “Do you know what you want for your second wish?”

“No,” Yuri says, and it’s true. His wants have always been related to food, safety, and his grandfather’s health and happiness. Small things, short-term things. Sure, there’s a part of him that would like to have his mother back, but he’s not fool enough to ask it; any magic that would bring the dead back to life would be dark indeed, and he wants no truck with that, even if Otabek could do it. 

“Think about it,” Otabek tells him, and Yuri nods, walking ever onward through the fields.

\--

Yuri does think about it. He thinks about it as the harvest is brought in, a tremendous bounty like he’s never seen, golden and smelling of the earth, the hot sun, reminding him subtly of the way Otabek smells when he sits beside Yuri on the porch, lazy and smiling in the late afternoon. He thinks about it as the leaves of the aspens and birch turn golden and fall, littering the forest floor with a shining carpet that makes Yuri think of the warm flecks of fire that dance in Otabek’s eyes when he’s pleased. He thinks about it the morning after the first week of hard freezes when he ventures out onto the small north pond, more cautious than ever of bad ice, and remembers the grace with which Otabek danced across the frozen surface.

It’s a whim, really, when he takes the pendant in his hand - he’s tired of thinking about it, tired of second-guessing himself, tired of trying to come up with a wish good enough. He’ll still have one wish left after this, after all.

“I wish to be a famous ice skater,” he says, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and when he opens them, the pond in front of him has transformed into a rink, crowded with fans waving banners and screaming his name. Yuri blinks, and an announcer’s voice echoes around him. 

“And now, our final competitor, in his senior debut, please welcome to the ice, Yuri Plisetsky!”

The crowd goes wild, and Yuri steps blindly onto the slick surface, his mind blank, trusting in Otabek’s magic to see him through this. 

Somewhere music begins to play, a haunting melody with a high voice singing like an angel. He can feel the slide of a costume across his skin, see the glint of sequins in the sun. He raises his arms and begins to move, and it’s like his body and the ice are dancing together, making art in a way that skating has never felt to him before. He gives himself over to it, twisting and spinning, leaping into the air and twirling, until the music finally stops and he falls panting to the ice, exultant and spent.

The applause is thunderous, overwhelming, and he can hear the announcer’s voice booming behind him, but the words wash over him like the gifts his fans are throwing onto the ice, stuffed cats and flowers and all manner of offerings to their hero, the Ice Tiger of Russia. 

He staggers to his feet in time for them to place a medal around his neck, shiny and gold as the plates in his house, as the coins his grandfather drops in the offering box. He puts it between his teeth to make sure, but it’s as real as everything else Otabek’s done for him, solid and unwavering in the face of challenge. 

He sees a dark head moving through the crowd, and begins to call out, but the official has his hand now, raising it to the sky in victory, and the cheers of the crowds drown out anything he might have had to say.

\--

It’s months then before he sees Otabek again, too busy traveling around the world, appearing in competitions and exhibitions, flinging himself across ice rinks and lakes like a man possessed, winning medal after medal after medal. 

It’s not perfect, for which he is grateful - he has to work for it. He doesn’t win every competition; if he’s unprepared, if he hasn’t practiced, he will fail. Otabek knows him well enough, he realizes, to know that he would bore quickly of easy, unearned, victory. No, instead it seems his wish just gave him a boost; the platform of instantly existing fame, yes, but fame and glory which he has to keep by merit of his own hard work.

“Do you like it?” Otabek asks him when he appears at Yuri’s side one evening in late spring. The ice in the lakes has all melted, but there are rinks, still, where the ice is kept artificially cold and Yuri is asked to perform to packed houses. He’s promised to stay home for a few months now that the competition season is over, to rest and recover and keep his grandfather company until it all starts again in the fall. 

Yuri thinks before he answers, Otabek’s body next to him radiating his supernatural warmth. Yuri presses against him, craving the heat against the evening chill, and Otabek wraps an arm around him. 

“I do,” he says at last. “Some of it, like the fans, is too much sometimes, and I know I won’t be able to do it forever, but. I love it.”

“Good,” Otabek says, and they sit quietly for a long time, watching as the moon rises over fields, a cool bone ivory against the velvety dark. “You still have one wish left,” Otabek tells him when full dark has fallen and Yuri is nearly asleep on his shoulder.

“I know,” Yuri mumbles, and buries his face in Otabek’s shirt. “Don’t care.”

He thinks that Otabek laughs in response, but he’s too close to sleep to know for sure, or to care when Otabek scoops him up gently and carries him inside.

\--

A final wish. It’s a lot of pressure, Yuri thinks, or maybe none at all. After all, he’s got everything now that he could ever have wanted. A safe and comfortable home, more food than he can eat. His grandfather happy and cared for, a career that brings him joy. His beloved Potya has even had kittens. 

What more could he possibly ask for that would even matter?

\--

The summer ends, and Yuri goes back on tour, traveling around the world and competing, winning nearly every competition he enters and practicing endlessly. It’s a string of empty rooms and overfull banquets, rubbing shoulders with the elite and then going back to a silent meal and a cold bed. 

Skating is still his overriding joy, the expression that comes to his body on the ice giving him a freedom he’d only found in bits and pieces before. He regrets none of his choices, and yet. Something is missing.

He comes home again at the end of the season, glad to see that his grandfather is doing well, happy to see the fields burgeoning again and his little village thriving. The influx of the Plisetsky wealth has kickstarted the economy, and there are new shops in the market square, more traders passing through than in years past. His grandfather’s house is familiar now, the bright paint welcoming instead of awe-inspiring, the golden plates needing to be washed just like the tin ones they’d had before.

The nights grow hot, and he takes to sleeping on the roof outside his room, watching the lightning bugs dance in the fields. Otabek joins him often, and they lie in the dark talking, Yuri telling stories of his travels while Otabek regales him with all of the village gossip he’s missed.

The light stays later and later in the sky every night, but Yuri has nothing else to do, no one to go to. He tries spending time with the other youths in the village, but they treat him like he’s not one of them and he grows frustrated with it quickly. He hangs around his grandfather, generally getting underfoot and in the way until the old man shoos him outside. 

Eventually he gives up and begins to cut logs, going out in the morning and felling small trees, dragging them back on a sledge to be split and dry in the sun. His grandfather’s hired workers offer their help, but Yuri waves them off. He needs something to do with himself, needs a distraction and a purpose, and so as the honeywell of spring fades into summer’s full flower, the foundation of a small house rises a half mile from his grandfather’s. 

Otabek watches him work, offering a tip or suggestion from time to time, but nothing more. Yuri is grateful for both his presence and his patience.

\--

By the end of summer, there’s a small house standing, unpainted, at the far end of the field, and Yuri is ready to make his final wish.

He waits until Otabek appears one morning, sitting on the little porch and drinking the coarse black tea that Yuri remembers from his childhood. 

Otabek appears the way he always does, out of sight one minute and there the next, walking calmly up the path in the warm sun, broad and handsome and with the smallest of smiles for Yuri.

“I know what I want to wish,” Yuri says as Otabek stops in front of him, and there’s a flicker of something in those dark eyes, but Otabek just nods. 

“What is your final wish?” he asks, and Yuri pulls the pendant out of his shirt, wrapping it tightly in his fingers. He doesn’t close his eyes.

“I wish not to be lonely,” Yuri says, his voice strong and challenging. Otabek stares at him, his face unreadable. 

“Do you wish for me to provide you with a wife?” he asks. “Or perhaps a hired man to work your fields, with whom you could pass the time?”

Yuri holds his gaze. “I would never wish to compel any individual to be with me against their will,” he says. “I have my grandfather and I have my cats; it is enough, if it needs to be. I will not bind anyone to me unwittingly.”

Otabek’s irises have a distinctly orange cast to them now, but Yuri has never been more certain and less afraid than he is now. “And what if they  _ were _ willing,” Otabek asks him, voice carefully neutral, “and witting? Would you then wish to bind them to you?”

Yuri can feel the heat between them as he stares into Otabek’s otherwordly eyes and slowly, deliberately, closes his own. 

“I would so wish it,” he says, and the air sizzles around him like lightning. His eyes snap open and his palm burns, the cord of his necklace falling from around his neck. He opens his hand, and where before there lay a simple pendant, now he holds two gold rings. 

“Your final wish is granted,” Otabek tells him, and Yuri can barely kiss him for want of smiling so hard.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] turn your heart into a temple of fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22755070) by [lysandyra (pxssnelke)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pxssnelke/pseuds/lysandyra)




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